A businessman, a prostitute, and a wife on her way up
In California Suite, released in 1978 and directed by Herbert Ross, Walter Matthau plays Marvin Michaels, a conservative, middle-aged businessman from Philadelphia who wakes up in a luxurious Beverly Hills hotel suite to discover a prostitute named Bunny asleep in his bed. Marvin did not order her. His brother Harry, played by Herb Edelman, sent her as a joke, or a gift, or a terrible idea, and now Marvin, who has never done anything remotely adventurous in his life, faces a crisis: his wife Millie, played by Elaine May, is on her way up to the suite, and he has only minutes to hide all traces of his supposed indiscretion. Matthau plays Marvin as a man in a state of cheerful panic, a respectable husband improvising desperately, and his segment, titled “Visitors from Philadelphia,” is the comic highlight of Neil Simon’s anthology film.
California Suite, adapted by Simon from his own Broadway play, follows four sets of visitors staying in the same Beverly Hills hotel suite, each story a self-contained comedy-drama. There are the New York parents, played by Jane Fonda and Alan Alda, fighting over their runaway daughter; the Chicago doctors and their wives, played by Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and their co-stars, on a disastrous holiday; and the British actress and her husband, played by Maggie Smith, who won an Oscar, and Michael Caine, arriving for an awards ceremony. Matthau’s story is the broadest and funniest of the four, a farce of locked doors, hidden women, invented excuses and escalating lies, and it works because Matthau plays Marvin not as a lecher but as an innocent man who looks guilty, which is a much funnier, and much more sympathetic, proposition.
Panic as a comic art form
Matthau’s gift for panic is on full display in California Suite. Marvin is a man who has lived by rules, schedules and respectable behaviour, and the sight of Bunny in his bed throws every rule out of the window. He tries to wake her, to dress her, to hide her in the bathroom, to bribe her, to reason with her, and each attempt makes the situation worse. Matthau plays the escalating desperation with wonderful physical comedy: rushing around the suite in his pyjamas, whispering urgently, opening and closing doors, and delivering Simon’s jokes at increasing speed as Millie’s arrival approaches. It is farce in the classic sense, a respectable man trapped by a situation he did not create, and Matthau’s timing, honed over decades on stage, makes every beat land.
Elaine May, as Millie, is the perfect foil. She arrives expecting a quiet weekend with her husband and instead finds a man behaving like a criminal, and May plays Millie’s suspicion, hurt and eventual fury with a mixture of comedy and real feeling. The genius of Simon’s writing, and of Matthau and May’s performances, is that the scene is not just about a hidden prostitute. It is about a marriage, about what a wife suspects when her husband acts strangely, and about what a husband will do to protect a marriage that is, in its ordinary way, worth protecting. When Millie finally discovers the truth, that Marvin is innocent, or at least innocent of what she feared, the reconciliation is genuinely touching, because Matthau has shown us, underneath the panic, a man who loves his wife and is terrified of losing her.
A small role in a big ensemble
Matthau’s segment is only about a quarter of California Suite, but it is the segment audiences remember most, and it demonstrates something important about Matthau’s stardom: he did not need to carry a whole film to steal it. In an ensemble that included Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, Matthau’s Marvin stands out because he is the most ordinary character in the film, and therefore the most relatable. Everyone else in California Suite is glamorous, talented or wealthy in an exceptional way. Marvin is just a businessman from Philadelphia, on a trip with his wife, trying not to make a fool of himself, and failing spectacularly. Audiences recognised him immediately, because most of us have felt like Marvin at some point: respectable, panicked, and convinced that a small misunderstanding is about to ruin everything.
Director Herbert Ross, who had also directed Matthau in The Sunshine Boys, directs the anthology with elegance, giving each story its own tone and letting the Beverly Hills hotel itself, with its luxurious suite, its room service and its views, provide a glamorous backdrop for very human problems. The film’s structure, four stories in one suite, could have felt like a stage play awkwardly transferred to film, but Ross and Simon make it work by keeping the focus on character rather than plot. Matthau benefits from that focus. His Marvin does not need elaborate sets or action sequences. He needs a hotel room, a locked bathroom door, a wife on her way up in the lift, and twenty minutes of escalating panic, and Matthau gives us all of that with a comic energy that never flags.
Why Marvin Michaels endures
Marvin Michaels endures because he is Matthau’s everyman at his funniest, the respectable man undone by a single, absurd morning. He is a cousin of Oscar Madison and Walter Burns, in that he is a man who improvises badly under pressure, but he is also gentler than those characters, a man whose panic comes from love rather than selfishness. That gentleness is what makes the segment more than a farce. When Marvin finally tells Millie the truth, stammering, exhausted and sincere, Matthau plays it straight, and the audience, which has been laughing for twenty minutes, suddenly feels the marriage at the heart of the joke. It is a small moment, but it is characteristic of Matthau: the comedian who never forgot that his characters were people first and punchlines second.
For Past Tunes readers, California Suite is a delightful showcase for Matthau in miniature, a reminder that a great comic actor can dominate a film in a single segment, and that Neil Simon’s writing, at its best, was a perfect match for Matthau’s timing. It is also a wonderful ensemble film, a snapshot of late 1970s Hollywood glamour and anxiety, and a chance to see Matthau alongside some of the finest actors of his generation. Watch it for Maggie Smith’s Oscar-winning performance and the other stories, and stay for Matthau’s Marvin Michaels, the businessman from Philadelphia who woke up in trouble and spent a very funny morning trying, and failing, to look innocent.